Barwick Colloquium: Jessica Bissett Perea

Barwick Colloquium: Jessica Bissett Perea 

Listening with and through x̌əč̓ [heart] to the Healing Heart of the First Peoples of This Land

Please note: This is an in-person event where Jessica Bissett Perea will join us virtually via Zoom to present her talk.

In Fall 2025 the Healing Heart Speaker Series was held at wǝɫǝbʔaltxʷ [Intellectual House] on the University of Washington Seattle campus. This series dedicated time and space to build community and to prepare the way for the late Upper Skagit Elder Vi taqᵂšəblu Hilbert’s The Healing Heart of the First People of This Land, an orchestral work that, in taqᵂšəblu’s words, is meant to “bring healing to a sick world.” As one of the only Elder-commissioned Indigenous orchestral works, the Healing Heart symphony draws inspiration from sacred Coast Salish songs taqᵂšəblu entrusted to Canadian composer Bruce Ruddell, and also features a number of Coast Salish percussion instruments. The work premiered in May 2006 by the Seattle Symphony, and in February 2026 the UW Symphony Orchestra offered the 4th ever performance of this work in its twentieth anniversary year. This talk will share insights from this in-progress project (2024-present) that centers Coast Salish Peoples, places, and projects (ways of being, knowing, and doing) to better understand the significance of Indigenous/local arts and aesthetics (or ways of valuing) as critical pathways for densifying approaches to global music history research.

Jessica Bissett Perea is a Dena’ina musician-scholar whose Indigenous-led and Indigeneity-centered work uplifts radical and relational ways of being, knowing, and doing to generate more just futures for Indigenous communities. Her first book Sound Relations: Native Ways of Doing Music History in Alaska (OUP, 2021) won the 2023 Irving Lowens Book Award from SAM, the 2023 International Council for Traditional Music and Dance Book Prize, and the 2023 Ruth Stone Prize from the Society of Ethnomusicology. She is currently co-editing two forthcoming volumes: Sovereign Aesthetics: Indigenous Approaches to Sound Studies (Duke UP with Trevor Reed); and the Oxford Handbook of Global Music History (with Olivia Bloechl, Daniel F. Castro Pantoja, Hedy Law, and Juliana Pistorius). Jessica holds the Frank L. and Catherine D. Doleshy Endowed Professorship in American Indian Studies, as well as adjunct appointments in the Comparative History of Ideas Department and the Music History Program in the School of Music, at the University of Washington.